Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. During his lifetime, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity. He is now considered a literary genius

authors appear to do) to be such an all- su
ffi
cient excuse for a naughty word, that I have only to 
write it in that language to make it innocent; 'if you talk of ghosts - ' 
'But I DON'T talk of ghosts,' said the German. 
'Of what then?' asked the Swiss. 
'If I knew of what then,' said the German, 'I should probably know a great deal more.' 
It was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So, I moved my position to that 
corner of my bench which was nearest to them, and leaning my back against the convent wall, 
heard perfectly, without appearing to attend. 
'Thunder and lightning!' said the German, warming, 'when a certain man is coming to 
see you, unexpectedly; and, without his own knowledge, sends some invisible messenger, to 
put the idea of him into your head all day, what do you call that? When you walk along a 
crowded street - at Frankfort, Milan, London, Paris - and think that a passing stranger is like 
your friend Heinrich, and then that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and 
so begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you'll meet your friend Heinrich - 
which you do, though you believed him at Trieste - what do you call THAT?' 
'It's not uncommon, either,' murmured the Swiss and the other three. 

---

'Uncommon!' said the German. 'It's as common as cherries in the Black Forest. It's as 
common as maccaroni at Naples. And Naples reminds me! When the old Marchesa Senzanima 
shrieks at a card- party on the Chiaja - as I heard and saw her, for it happened in a Bavarian 
family of mine, and I was overlooking the service that evening - I say, when the old Marchesa 
starts up at the card-table, white through her rouge, and cries, "My sister in Spain is dead! I felt